I want to focus on the NSO performance, which was phenomenal. It was my first time at the Kennedy Center and even though I went by myself, I enjoyed it. The first thing you see when you walk in is a long hallway with the flags of the world hanging above you. (I saw my flag :-)) It's an amazing feeling...you feel like royalty because of the red carpets. I was possibly one of the youngest people there that night. As I made my way to my seat, I was surrounded by elderly people even those with oxygen tanks. Listening to them chatting behind me and across me, I realised that some of them were regulars...they didn't even know what the program was until they sat down and read the schedule. They obviously just enjoy the classical music.
As I watched people trying to find their seats, I thought to myself that it would be really cool to do an ethnography on the audience there. There was such a wide variety of personalities and some of them didn't look like the typical fans classical music. I saw this one guy who wore a ton of gold jewelry, and it wasn't simple chains but bulky ones with jewels in them and he also wore rings and lots of bracelets. He seemed to be a regular NSO follower as well because he knew some of the people around me.
I had gone to the performance primarily for my Understanding Music class to take notes on the performance as well as the audience. Funnily enough, I got a lot of help from the audience as we exited after the program. There were lots of people so it took a while to get down the staircase and all around me everyone was critiquing the NSO and the composers. It was amazing! I am a music lover and I felt really at home...the audience was so knowledgeable. I compared this audience to the one at AU's Carmina Burana, the following night. There was such a big contrast! AU's crowd didn't chat about anything musical between numbers. It was a very different experience for me.
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